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SAVE ME FROM WHAT I WANT
WHEN I VISITED SOUTH FLORIDA, I WAS AMAZED by the relentlessly upbeat attitude of the people around me. The weather report was always optimistic. The boat skipper resembled Jon Bonjovi, sporting shades and a wide grin. As I picked up my breakfast at Dunkin Donuts, the staff would insist that I have a nice day and a great dive.
And to be honest, it was beginning to get right on my nerves.
I'm more accustomed to the TV promising floods, pestilence and disaster. Skippers are meant to scowl, cast an eye at the heavens and mutter: "You'll be lucky to get offshore in these conditions - and the viz out there is s***!" They also look like Worzel Gummidge having a bad cardigan day. I'm comfortable with that.
If the sea were always warm and the visibility crystal, where would be the challenge? We'd have to find completely new stuff to whinge about, and those Internet scuba forums would grind to a halt.
Having a good old moan is the lifeblood of UK diving. Not because divers are miserable, but because we're British. Agreeing with each other about what a rough deal we've got is what binds us together. It's part of our national psyche. We're quietly proud of the fact that we can handle the crap viz, the unpredictable weather and the spartan facilities.
The flipside is that we hold warmwater divers in utter contempt, which is why BSAC's "You're Welcome campaign" is doomed. If dive clubs were as lovey-dovey as those posters would have us believe, we'd all be too busy snogging with tropical fish to get any diving done.
PADI Open Water types would have to stop complaining about being patronised, and start getting concerned about being slobbered to death.
If global warming were to transform UK diving conditions, we'd be completely shafted. For the sake of your sanity, send off that Greenpeace subscription today!
Naturally, I have had many moans about diving - the biggest one being that the sport lacks glamour and style. How come snowboarders are fashion darlings, whereas we end up looking like a cross between an overgrown frog and a Christmas tree?
I'm always sighing about how unfair it is, being forced into unsuitable outfits, and having to wear the kind of clumpy equipment that looks like a reject from a Dr Who set. What's a girl to do?
So imagine my shock on finding in the Sunday Times Style magazine that a naff rainbow weightbelt - the bog-standard kind you purchase
in your local dive store - is this season's hottest fashion accessory.
And Gucci (I kid you not) has designed a pair of fins. Black, with embossed Gucci logos arranged diagonally across the surface. They'll look perfect in a new Louis Vuitton divebag...
Sexy girlie dive T shirts are popping up faster than trainees on a buoyancy exercise. Narcosis, Fourth Element, Diving Daisy - we could fill a catwalk several times over with designer brands.
I would happily flaunt the stylish new Suunto Mosquito dive computer in any trendy Hoxton bar. And those lovely shiny stainless-steel accessories from Custom Divers would fit in perfectly at the Torture Gardens' industrial theme night
Even the deeply unsexy drysuit has been transformed. Makers such as O'Three and Poseidon have realised that women who dive are not shaped like small versions of men. They have perfected the art of making suits that fit gracefully over your hips and don't flatten your boobs.
Now if I look like a heffalump underwater, I have no one to blame but myself. And the staff at Dunkin Donuts.
Complaining is great, until people take you seriously. And if you ask for what you want, someone might actually give it to you.
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